Anthony Evan Hecht

The Dover Bitch: A Criticism Of Life - Poem by Anthony Evan Hecht

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So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girlWith the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,And he said to her, 'Try to be true to me,And I'll do the same for you, for things are badAll over, etc., etc.'Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had readSophocles in a fairly good translationAnd caught that bitter allusion to the sea,But all the time he was talking she had in mindthe notion of what his whiskers would feel likeOn the back of her neck. She told me later onThat after a while she got to looking outAt the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,Thinking of all the wine and enormous bedsAnd blandishments in French and the perfumes.And then she got really angry. To have been broughtAll the way down from London, and then be addressedAs sort of a mournful cosmic last resortIs really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.Anyway, she watched him pace the roomand finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,And then she said one or two unprintable things.But you mustn't judge her by that. What I mean to say is,She's really all right. I still see her once in a whileAnd she always treats me right. We have a drinkAnd I give her a good time, and perhaps it's a yearBefore I see her again, but there she is,Running to fat, but dependable as they come,And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d'Amour.